


Twenty Six Shackles

by bbcsherlockian



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M, POV Sherlock Holmes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 02:54:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1039501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bbcsherlockian/pseuds/bbcsherlockian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Words - they hold us down, they hold us down, keeping my sentiments barred within my chest.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twenty Six Shackles

I’ll never be able to explain to you in a thousand sentences, in tens of thousands of words (and words and words), in miles of my scribbled cursive how much you mean to me. I only have twenty six letters at my disposal and in absolutely none of the millions of combinations can I come anywhere close to describing my simple adoration for you. But I can try, oh, I can try. 

I’ll carve your name into my chest (your letters, carefully scribed into the parchment of my skin), and as the blood blossoms to the surface and the shallow pools overflow down onto my ribs, I’ll press myself close to you so that my red, warm mark will be smeared right over your beating (beating, beating) heart. I’ll grab your wrist and force your fingers into my wounds, twisting them deeper and deeper until my blood runs endlessly down your arm and you realise that the man with no heart most certainly has one for you. It will burn blinding and hot, leaving the scars of your name forever brandished onto me (you’ve already scratched it messily on my insides; why not my exterior, why, why not), and I’ll touch them every day I’m still breathing so I can remember the reason for my laboured breaths.

I’ll tell you with my (limited, forever restricted) words how I worship you in every way I possibly know how; every overused cliché, every secret declaration in the dark - ‘love’ seems too weak a word for what we have. And with the ending of my last syllable, I’ll pull you towards my mouth so I can proclaim to you with my lips all of my oaths and testimonies again (i love you, i love you, don’t leave me here alone) before biting off my own tongue so that I may never utter anything more. You’ll know enough. 

I’ll make you talk (and talk and talk) while I rip myself open straight down the middle and let your meagre and restricted words wash over me. I’ll absorb you (your scent, salty and warm with dark, dark, dark undertones; your sounds, the intonation of your voice and the lyrics of your breathing), surround myself in your everything so that I may keep an essence of you, forever caged within my organs. 

I’ll dye my hair white so that I may be an unmarked canvas (paint me, paint me with your beauty and your sin). I’ll give you all of the colours (the day, the night, ethereal purples and harshly tainted blues) on every spectrum on this planet so that you may mark me and label me as your own; if these vibrancies are not to last forever then I shall beat all colour from my hair until nothing (nothing, nothing) exists but perpetual black because I want your life to pigment my every cell until the end of time itself.

But words (oh, these confined and tethered twenty six letters) know nothing of you. If only I could tear at the confines of my own skin, rip myself apart only to have you stitch me lovingly together or taint myself with my devotion to you. But life is not such. So I’ll settle for the mundane: I’ll leave two slices of toast by your bedside every morning, I’ll let you sit for hours and card your fingers through my hair, I’ll breathe hot into your mouth in the dark stillness of the early daybreak as we rock (gently, oh so gently) together, I’ll buy you soup and tea when you are in the throes of sickness, I’ll heal you and caress you with gentle touches like you do to me and I’ll love you still (completely and entirely) when our bodies are suffering under the restrictions of time and weariness, when we’ll be tired and ready to depart together, hand in hand. But I think that even without my words (they weigh my thoughts down, they suffocate my language), without my limitless streams of twenty six letters, I think you already know.


End file.
